projects « adafruit industries blog

Best projects of 2009, MAKE magazine

 Upload 2009 12 Best Projects Of 2009 Make Magazine 2009Covers
Vote for Tweet-a-Watt, MAKE, Vol. 18 for Best projects of 2009 in MAKE magazine!

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted December 30, 2009 at 12:34 am


THE CLOCK

4210430248 530Fd9Fd0B
Jason von Nieda’s vacuum tube clock based on our Ice Tube Clock kit!. Design files and build information available at http://www.vonnieda.org/tc18



Solar charge battery powered toys…

 Diy Wp-Content Uploads 2009 12 Car6
Jeff writes in with a quickie solar project…

I recently purchased two remote control cars for my nephews from a dollar store.  The cars came with three rechargeable AA batteries and also a cheap AC charger that connects to the car, but unfortunately grew hot when plugged in (a classic wall wart). So I’m giving them the cars with a solar panel and withholding the AC chargers. The best part is how easy it was to make it all work as I piggy-backed on the car’s built-in charging circuit.

Solarpanel13W Med
6V Solar panel – 1.3 Watt – These panels come to us from Voltaic Systems, makers of fine solar-powered bags and packs. These are waterproof, scratch resistant, and UV resistant. They use a high efficiency monocrystalline cell. They output 6V at 200 mA via 3.5mm x 1.3mm DC jack connector. The substrate is an aluminum / plastic composite, specifically designed to be strong and lightweight. They can easily stand up to typical outdoor use including being dropped and leaned on.

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted December 27, 2009 at 12:16 am


It’s Fritzmas! Get one of 24 free individual Arduino Shields

Boards-Bottom
Andre writes -

That’s right – we’re finally coming full circle with the Fritzing project and are soon launching the much-wanted fabrication service that turns your Fritzing sketches into professional printed circuit boards! So in order to kick it off, we thought why not celebrate this as a fritzmas present to the community. We will produce 24 of your Arduino Shields (or other) designs you made with Fritzing. You will receive two copies for free, including free shipping. Deadline for receiving your design is December 9th. Head over to the Fritzing fab page to find out how to participate.

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted December 8, 2009 at 1:00 am


Adafruit Motor shield for Arduino and a model train!


Aspro648 writes -

A more functional train microcontroller… Power is coming from a 12V wall transformer which powers both the Arduino (at 5V), and the shield(at 12V). The shield provides pulse-width modulated DC to the rails. The microcontroller is programmed to control direction, maximum speed, and rate of change. I am using a momentary toggle switch with center off to increase or decrease speed. The computer is reading the current settings from the controller over a USB connection. Hitting the reset button automatically stops the train.

Holy smokes. That was easy. In one evening I soldered the kit and had my model train doing the “PWM-boogie”. Thanks to Lady Ada for making it possible for wantabe hacks like me to do cool stuff! [and] Added a toggle switch and more code, and now it is a functional train controller. I can set the max speed and max rate of change to simulate a real engine while keeping is easy enough for my 7yo daughter to run. All I need is some positional sensing and I can do some auto reversing, ect. I’m amazed how easy you made this for us! Many thanks Lady Ada!



LP (SMT Land Pattern) Calculator

 Products Images Prod Lpcalcv2009
Hello handy!

The FREE IPC-7351B LP Calculator is a fantastic time saver. It is a land pattern calculator based on the IPC-7351B SMT land pattern standard that allows you to define your own CAD land patterns and offers seamless compatibility with the freely-distributed library documentation.

Ralph from the forums writes..

The Institute of Printed Circuits (IPC) has standards for “land patterns” (as they call pad shapes). You can download a free calculator from pcbmatrix.com that lets you generate IPC standard land patterns for any component. It still seems ridiculous, though, that every designer has to reinvent this wheel. There should have been a standard symbol and footprint file format invented a long time ago, with every component manufacturer providing downloadable libraries for their parts. You can download SPICE models from manufacturers, but have to do everything else yourself, or pay big $$$ for quality commercial libraries.

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted November 16, 2009 at 3:00 am


Firmware comparison chart for the Ice Tube clock kit

File-2
Stefan has started a great chart that compares the features of the various firmware (mods) for the Ice Tube Clock kit! He writes -

As I’m not sure which firmware I want to use or modify I’ve done a comparison between them. I hope I got all features. If not, please give me some input – I’ll put it in asap.



Applying solder paste by hand


Kevin writes -

While the normal way of applying solder paste to your boards is with a metal stencil (or perhaps a cheaper plastic stencil for one off prototypes), if your board only has a couple dozen components or you are pressed for time, it may end up being more time consuming than it’s worth to have a real stencil made. Thankfully, solder paste stencils aren’t the only feasible way to accurately apply solder paste to you board. With only a few inexpensive pieces of equipment (and a bit of patience) you can just as easily apply the solder paste by hand

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted at 3:00 am


Ice Tube clock build-a-thon

 Images Ice Tube Clock
Eggplant posted up in our forums about the Ice Tube clock kit and included a great photo!

Just completed. Worked first time, no issues, and I’m quite a novice at soldering. Fantastic kit! Everything fit together beautifully, and the instructions were clear. I especially appreciate the mid-build tests.

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted November 10, 2009 at 3:00 am


Double-sided soldering with a SMT oven


Double-sided soldering with a SMT oven… in our weekly chats, people asked how the machine does it, kinda like the human, but automated – the glue thing, that is.

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted October 25, 2009 at 1:29 pm


Ghost made with Adafruit motorshield

Ghost
Under
From Adafruit forum member Konstantin -

It has the latest arduino and Ladyada motorshield. There are three pair of LED – green and two red. Red ones are closer to each other and lower – when you walk close, his eyes follow you. There are two stepper motors supposed to lift his arms, but they do not work very good. The morots are from CD drive, and are not powerful enough (they try hard though), or may be motor shield does not yield enough power? There is vibrating motor from toy frontloader. With 12V it vibrates way to fast – you cannot really see it on a video, you can just hear the noise, but when you come close, and it suddenly start vibrating – that’s spooky The ghost, just like a bat, relies on ultrasonic distance sensor…



Here come the hacks! Dimmer for the Adafruit Ice Tube Clock

Img 0819
Here come the hacks! Dimmer for the Adafruit Ice Tube Clock. Dave writes!

The Ice Tube Clock is a vacuum fluorescent display clock kit from Adafruit industries. I recently put one together and have been enjoying its calming blue glow. Unfortunately at night the calm blue glow is a little on the bright side. While there is a menu option to adjust the brightness it would be better if the clock dimmed automatically. Fortunately, the clock came with a few unused pins on the microcontroller and a space on the circuit board to add a sensor.

I added a resistor an a photocell to act as an automatic dimmer. The microcontroller provides power from one of its pins (which is turneed off if the clock is running on battery backup) and senses the voltage across the photoresistor using its analog to digital converter. I added a menu option to turn the dimmer on and off. Its operation is pretty simple. If the room is pretty dark, the display is at minimum brightness. If the room is light, the display is at the brightness set by the user. For extra credit I could add some sort of sensitivity option to the menu but I figured I would start simple and see how well it works. A modified firmware to enable the dimmer control (based off of Adafruit’s Sept 30th firmware) is available there.

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted October 9, 2009 at 9:57 am


Using diagonal clippers


A handy tool tip from Ladyada on using diagonal flush clippers to cut headers (m4v).



Our first open source Homeland Security non-lethal weapon – The Do-it-yourself handheld LED-based Incapacitator: THE BEDAZZLER

Allledtest T
Complete2 T

Our first open source Homeland Security non-lethal weapon project – The “Do-it-yourself Handheld LED-Based Incapacitator: THE BEDAZZLER”. After attending a conference where the $1million “sea-sick flashlight” (THE DAZZLER) was demoed by Homeland Security, we decided to create an under $250 version and here are the source code, schematics and PCB files! This is not a kit – but it is an Arduino project! – the M4V is here for the podcast folks…

Check it out!

Update: We’ve included a transcript of the video for the hearing impaired and well, we think all videos should have transcripts. For transcripts we used 3Play Media. We uploaded the video, they transcribed it, we paid via paypal, all under a week and under $30 for two videos total.

(more…)



Making an Edge-lit acrylic sign

File-1
Le5045A
Some handy tips and results in the Adafruit customer forums on making an edge-lit acrylic sign. Looks like LED tape is the way to go!

Filed under: projects — by adafruit, posted September 22, 2009 at 2:00 am


Older Posts »
www.flickr.com
adafruit's items Go to adafruit's photostream
www.flickr.com
items in Adafruits More in Adafruits pool